In this 39th post on the Phantom 2040 TV Animation series I worked on in the early 90's , here I have posted more layout grids I used to make a more accurate perspective to follow for the final layouts done at Sei Young Animation Studios in South Korea.

Perspective Grids, as I have stated prior make for better designs as your 3D space is laid out for you to follow, and your mind can focus on the design proportions, not accuracy of the camera. This was the only way we could get out layouts done at the right angles for our extensive use of fish eye lens on worms eye and birds eye shots.

A red logo using the VW pattern from the seats as a bump map on the face object.

Personal ProjectHot VW's 3D Logo

As a VW fan and having owned a good dozen old VW's I thought I'd take a quick pass at the Hot VW's Logo which is illustrated to emulate a 3D metal Automotive Logo as seen on every car out there. I found the Illustrator file on the Hot VW's website, and brought it into 3DS max 2010 to adjust and prepare for the Logo build. I had some textures made from the Herbie project so I used some of those in this exercise.

The set up is in Final Render with a Box light above and a spot light below. It has the Log in the center of a reflection sphere so I can control what is going on in the chrome parts of the file. FUN stuff.

In this 38th post on the Phantom 2040 TV Animation series I worked on in the early 90's , here I have posted a variety of flying motorcycle designs I did for the show that were called hyper-cycles due to a small hand sized space hyper-drive system allowing them enough energy to hover and fly.

I did a variety of hyper-cycles for various characters including the Phantom/Kit Walker, the Enforcers, and Kits college buddy's Jenna. I also show some development sketches as well , showing a small bit of the process behind it.

An exploded view showing all the 3D parts that are in the Speedometer 3D Model used in the trailers.

A finished render from the trailers we did.

Behind the Art1963 VW Herbie Speedometerbuild out for the Theatrical Trailers.

I have posted on the Herbie VW model I built for the trailers for the Lindsay Lohan film back in 2004 while running a 3D department at The Cimarron Group and here qwe can llok at the build out of the Speedo for that project.

We had some ideas where we needed to get real close to the speedometer and being a VW affectionate myself this was a pure joy to work on with this level of detail.

Above you can see the process I had in building out the separate parts for the VDO Speedo found in a 1964 VW, and I built out the texture map for the face in 3D first since it was all custom fonts and needed the hand built approach to get it right vs a photo.

In this third posting for Cafe Morpheus Asylum the Restaurant I illustrated for John R. Thomas in Beverly Hills CA. back in the very early 90's, I focus in this post on the blueprint Designs for the custom made ceiling fans, lighting, and bar stools that were all made entirely from scratch.

The first drawing is for the huge 8 foot ceiling fan ala "Blade Runner" with a roof lighting system so faux moonlight would stream into the smoke filled Mezzanine with the slow rotation of the giant industrial fan. The fan itself, we found it in a junkyard, a vintage fan that weighed about 600 pounds so we cast the parts from plastic and faux finished them as the weight was a liability to use the original.

The second drawing breakdown is for the custom post mount bar stools that used a VW deck-Lid sprint to give some nice "steampunk" Industrial feeling to the seats as well as function to give a bit of spring to the backs.

The bent tube lamps were all build out of solid copper and brass parts and finished with a great patina aging them to look like the originals from 100 years back.

I also designed two Frank Lloyd Wright styled lamps for the upstairs "Blade Runner" room area as well. One was a direct lift from a table lamp from his Prairie collection, and the other was a unique design with a parallelogram hinge system so the lamp could move up and down via the wall mount and remain level at all times. This one was build from Aluminum and steel and anodized with an art glass shade as well.

I had the privilege of working on four Twilight ad campaigns so far and here I post PART II covering some Logos and 3D Illustrations I did for the second film Twilight New Moon.

I revisited the single point beveled logos based on the logo from the book, as well and the "g" was modified a bit with more curl in the tail so we had the main logo and the episode title "NEW MOON" done in a variety of materials and in all uppercase all lowercase etc. I also did a few Illustrations, one of the Dreamcatcher and one of some crests for the new addition of another clan.

In this 37th post on the Phantom 2040 TV Animation series I worked on in the early 90's , here I have posted a variety of underlay grids I create to block out the background layout designs.

I have taught Curvilinear Perspective and having a bit of curve to the drawings gives it an effect like a fish eye lens rather than using a 3 point "faked" perspective which will severely distort the images when you use extreme angles in your views. I taught the teams in France, and South Korea , and Vancouver in using Ship Curves and French Curves to Illustrate these fish eye views.

Above are some small layout grids I blocked for main sequences from the show since our vendor merely Xeroxed up the boards and painted them directly without a layout sketch, so we needed to have very accurate storyboards to ensure our low budget show would have a good look to it. I think we did it. Animators also used the grids to properly foreshorten the characters in these scenes as well.

While I had a running 3D Department at The Cimarron Group for six years, one of my regular internal clients was our Corporate division up on the 4th floor, which had at the time a retainer with Universal Studios, so we addressed any Marketing needs for the Theme Parks.

This post covers two separate jobs for the T-2 Attraction. One was a Liquid Metal Illustration for a few items so I took the background image and created a reflection map enviornment in Photoshop to reflect in the chome arms I built in 3D. THe finish render was a 2D Illustration blended into the Photo.

I also had to rebuild the eyes from the Terminator and turn them to Camera. Also the Photography was a very low resolution so I had to render these at 5K in width for a final piece of Marketing Artwork. Subject matter for an Industrial Designer is second to none for me on this fun project. It was a great experience to help out.

In this 36th post on the Phantom 2040 TV Animation series I worked on in the early 90's , here I have posted a variety of industrial design items I had to create for the series "The Phantom 2040".

I had to design about five variations of speed trains that would run inside and over the top of the vine like freeway and train tracks that wrapped around the city. I also have some product designs I did for a variety of props needed from medical to military use. Always something new for each of the 56 episodes I worked on, and so much fun to design.

BabelFish Universal Translator Widget

About Me

Trained in Transportation Design at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, I have worked for the past 24 years in every facet of Entertainment Design as Conceptual Designer, up to Design Director. I am currently running my design studio full time out of my home in Littleton, CO.
In the past, I have orchestrated teams as large as 100 on an international level , and as small as a few artists. Art Center gave me the formal training in Industrial Design via sketching and modeling to execute my designs.
The variety within the Entertainment Industry that I have been involved with includes: Television Commercial Set Design, 2D Animation Television Series, Restaurant Design and Illustration, Real Time 3D Interactive Gaming, Online 3D Web interface, CD ROM Magazine Design, Theme Park Attraction Design, and finally ending up in Entertainment based Advertising for Theatrical Films.
I have experience starting up both 2D, and 3D design departments, as well as moving into existing studio infrastructures of operation and working within established systems already in place.